"Who said that? There wasn't a plan. We do what we do when we wanna do it, remember? And right now, I wanna swim with you."
"Okaaay. Well, what if I don't want to swim right now?"
"Then I do this." And then he dropped the raft and picked me up and tossed me right in the water.
I came up sputtering, madder than a hatter. The water was only about as high as my shoulders where he had tossed me and so I stood up, glaring at him as he grinned down at me from the side of the pool. "I cannot believe you just tossed me in the pool!"
"Well, believe it. I did," he said, throwing the raft in the water and then walking his perfect body to the deeper end and executing the most perfect dive I'd ever seen, slicing straight through the water.
Before I could even blink, he had swum underwater to me and was pulling me under by my legs. I opened my eyes under the water, making my most angry face at him as he met my eyes and grinned. God damn him, he was even beautiful underwater with air bubbles coming out of his nose.
He let go of me and I surfaced, smoothing my hair back. He surfaced a second later laughing and running his hand through his hair. "Don't be mad, Buttercup. I just couldn't wait to get slippery again with you."
I glared at him for another second, but I couldn't maintain my anger at him, looking at me with that innocent expression, water droplets sticking to his impossibly long eyelashes.
I shook my head, not able to contain the smile that made its way to my face. "You really are an asshole. I can't believe you threw me in the pool. No one has ever thrown me in a pool."
He swam up to me, pulling my body to his and swirling us around in the water. "That's a shame. You're so pretty soaking wet." He leaned in and kissed me lightly on my lips, and then kissed each of my eyes and then my nose. Okay, he was forgiven.
"You're a really good swimmer," I noted.
He nodded. "When you grow up in hotels and cheap apartments, all with pools, you tend to spend a lot of time perfecting your swim strokes." He paused. "I didn't have much else to do. Some kids play basketball. I swam."
I studied him. "I guess I was under the impression that because your mom was… famous… that you had money."
"Hard to have anything when you spend everything you have on non-prescribed prescription drugs. And I know I used the word 'famous' before, but I would probably say 'well known' is a better term. But in the business, that doesn't always translate into 'well paid.' It just means she was willing to do things others weren't."
I stared at him, my heart hurting. What must it have been like for a little boy to know what his mom was doing every time she went off to a job like that? We were at the pool though and this wasn't the time to ask him any more questions.
I changed the subject. "Why'd you borrow that raft?" I asked, nodding my head toward it, floating nearby.
"Because I want to prove a point," he said, swimming to it and pulling it back to me.
"Oh God, is this part of your Titanic therapy?" I asked. "Listen, I'm not a professional. And I really think this requires one."
He winked at me. "Never let go, baby. Come on, work this through with me. I need you, Grace."
I laughed. And then we spent the next half an hour trying to get us both up on that narrow raft without tipping over. Every time he rolled off, he would sink under, holding one hand up in his imitation of a human popsicle. I was laughing so hard my face hurt.
Finally he was able to hold himself steady enough that he could drag me on top of him and we both lay there, eyes wide, moving as little as possible. A slow grin spread across his face and he whispered to me, "I knew it."
"Never let go, baby," I whispered back.
He laughed and that was all it took for us to capsize.
**********
Carson
We got out of the water and dried off and collapsed on the lounge chairs. I kept one eye on Grace's little bikini-clad body as she closed her eyes and dozed off for a little while.
I walked over to the bar and ordered us a couple beers and when she stretched and opened her eyes a half an hour later, I handed her her drink. "Thanks. Sorry, was I out for long?"
"I'm glad you were. I need you well rested for tonight." I winked at her.
She smiled teasingly at me. "Why? Are we going to work through more emotional cinematic issues?"
I laughed. "Same one. Only we're gonna use the bed as the flotation device."
"You really do need extensive therapy, don't you? I might have to start charging."
I took the beer out of her hand and pulled her over on top of me. "Name your price. I'll pay it," I said, squeezing her ass and tickling her ribs.
"Ahhh! Carson, you're gonna make me pee on you," she squealed.
"Kinky. But not at the pool, baby. Not everyone's into that kinda smut. You're gonna shock some–"
"Grace? Is that you?" a male voice asked.
My head came up and Grace's whipped around. She sat up and was over on her own lounger so fast, my hands were still positioned where her ass had been milliseconds before.
There was a tall, brown haired guy in swim trunks standing at the end of our lounge chairs looking at Grace with a worried expression on his face.
"Parker! Hi. Oh my goodness. I didn't even know you'd be here this weekend! Hi!"
"Hi," he said, looking over at me, clearly waiting for an introduction. Grace ignored it.
"So, how are you enjoying the conference so far?" she asked, tilting her head and smiling at him. I saw his eyes dart down to her practically naked body before he answered, and I felt my hands clenching into fists.
"Uh, it's good. I really liked Professor Fulton's talk this afternoon. What did you think? I didn't see you there."
"Oh, um, I've been sitting in the back mostly. Yeah, the talk was good. Very informative." She nodded her head vigorously. I wondered if this geeky bozo could see how full of shit she was. If he couldn't, he didn't know her very well. That thought made me want to smirk, but I held it in.
Finally, he just stuck his hand out to me and said, "Parker Grayson, I'm in school with Grace."
I held out my hand and opened my mouth to speak when Grace cut in, "This is Rick… Ryder. He's in law school at, uh, Stanford."
Parker looked dubious. "Stanford, huh? Great school. How do you two know each other?"
"Oh Rick's parents are friends of the family. You know. We go way back. Right, Rick?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Right."
"Oh, well it's cool that you two got to see each other here then. What's your law focus, Rick?"
I narrowed my eyes at Parker and glanced at Grace. She looked panicked. My eyes traveled down to her cleavage.
"Well, Parker, I would say my focus is parts inspection."
Parker looked confused. "Oh, you mean like the law surrounding industrial labor laws?"
"Sure Parker," I said.
Grace laughed nervously. "Well, it was great to see you. We'll have to do coffee when we get back."
Parker turned his confused face from me and grinned at Grace, his eyes sweeping her body again. "Sounds good. I'll call you."
"Okay." She waved at him.
I watched him turn his scrawny body and walk away. I was legions above him in the looks department, so why did I fucking hate Parker Grayson?
I turned back to Grace. "Rick Ryder?" I asked. "Nice save if you didn't want him to know what I do."
"He's too straight-laced to get it. Hell, yesterday, I wouldn't have gotten it." She fell back in her lounger, exhaling.
My chest felt tight and I wanted to punch something. "Ready?" I said, gathering our things.
"Oh, okay… if you are." She looked at me nervously. "Carson, I'm sorry, it just wouldn't look good for my career if it got out that I was canoodling with a porn star."
"Canoodling, Grace? Jesus, I don't even know what the fuck that is."
"You're mad," she said, biting her lip.
"No, I'm not mad. I'm just ready to leave."
She nodded and
started grabbing her stuff too, putting it into her bag. It was then that I spotted Tawny Anderson, a girl who worked for the same company I did. She was a beautiful redhead with a killer body. I hadn't ever made a film with her, but she had propositioned me for some extracurricular time on many occasions. I had never taken her up on it.
She was standing at the bar a couple feet away with a girl I didn't recognize. "Hey Tawny," I called and she turned around, her eyes lighting up.
She walked over to me and met me right in front of Grace's chair. "Carson!" she squealed, kissing my cheek and pressing her large breasts into my chest.
I smiled suggestively at her. "Hey baby, how are you?" I asked, pulling her into me and gripping her ass.
"I'm great, gorgeous. I heard you had a family emergency. Anything I can help with?" She ran one finger down my chest.
"Maybe. What did you have in mind?"
"I'm sure I could think of something." She giggled. "But I thought you didn't mix business with pleasure."
"I might be able to make an exception for you," I said, raising my eyebrows and squeezing her ass tighter.
That's when Grace cleared her throat, and me and Tawny both turned our heads to see her standing there with her shoes and cover up on and her bag on her shoulder, looking for us to move so she could get by us.
"Who's she, Carson?" Tawny demanded.
"She's no one, babe," I said, and the look that came over Grace's face nearly brought me to my knees. She looked like I had just slapped her in the face and kicked her while she was down. I felt that look like a punch in the gut.
Grace didn't wait for us to move, but instead pushed past us, knocking Tawny off balance. "Watch it girlie!" Tawny said angrily. Grace didn't even look back.
"Anyway," Tawny said, turning back to me and taking my hand and replacing it on her ass, "where were we?"
I was such a stupid fuck up. Holy Christ. What had I done? I was so fucking hurt when she made me feel like an embarrassment, like a nothing in front of her friend. I had automatically reacted, trying to make her feel the same way too. And I'd succeeded. And it felt like shit. "Sorry, Tawny, I gotta go," I said, taking her by the shoulders and physically moving her out of my way.
"Wait, what? I thought we were gonna hang out!" she whined.
"You were right," I said over my shoulder. "I don't mix business with pleasure. Almost forgot for a minute there."
I jogged in the direction Grace had gone, looking around and finally spotting her going through the door to the hotel. I raced after her.
When I got inside, I ran to the elevators, hoping to find her waiting for one. I had fucked up. I had to make this right. She wasn't anywhere to be seen. I flashed my room card to the guard and pressed the "up" button furiously, swearing under my breath. When the elevator finally came, I jumped on and when a few people tried to follow me in, I held my hand up and said, "Sorry! Emergency! No one else is gonna ride this elevator!" They stepped back, confused, as I pushed Grace's room floor. No one else was gonna slow me down in getting to her. Panic coursed through me. Shit, I had done this. I had fucking done this.
When the elevator doors opened, I raced down the hallways and as I turned the corner, I saw Grace almost to her room, taking out her key card. When she heard me behind her, she turned, surprise filling her expression, the hurt still clear in her large, blue eyes.
She turned back around to her door.
"I'm sorry, Grace," I said, desperately.
She halted. "Nothing to be sorry for, Carson. You obviously have a life. I got in the way of it for a minute there. Please, don't let me interrupt the plans you have with Tawny."
"I don't have any plans with Tawny, Grace. I did that because I didn't like what happened with Parker. It made me feel like nothing and I wanted to do the same to you. It wasn't fair and I fucked up, and I'm sorry."
She studied me for a minute. "I understand. I'm sorry too. But this," she gestured between me and her, "isn't going to work. Not even for a weekend. I've had a nice time. But we both need to get back to our real lives. We don't make any kind of sense."
She slid her key in the slot at her door and when I heard the click indicating that it was open and she was about to go inside, I breathed out, "No one else has ever made me feel the way you do. Not even close. It scared me, Grace, and I reacted. But it's because you are far from nothing to me. You are far from nothing to me," I repeated, begging her with my eyes to forgive me.
She looked at me for another couple beats, expressionless and my heart dropped. Then she finally looked down at the floor and looked back up at me. "Do you wanna come inside, Rick?" she asked.
I laughed out a relieved laugh. "Yes, Buttercup, I do."
She nodded and held her door open to let me in.
CHAPTER 9
Grace
I held the door open as Carson walked in behind me. The lump that had been in my throat during the entire walk from the pool up to my room was starting to recede, but I still felt the lingering hurt over watching Carson with Tawny and what he had said to her about me. I had asked myself all the way up to my room why that stung so damn much that I wanted to roll into a ball and cry. But I had hurt him too. I just hadn't realized it at the time. I thought he would understand why I couldn't flaunt the fact that I was spending time with an adult film star. That was the kind of thing that could come out later and ruin my career as a lawyer–especially in D.C. where politics always came into play. I had thought he would roll with it and laugh it off after Parker walked away. It's why I had come up with that dumb name on the spot–trying to put a private joke out there for Carson. I hadn't meant to make him feel like he was nothing, that's not how I felt. But our lives didn't mix. Those encounters at the pool made that blatantly obvious. This was supposed to be a weekend of fun, of letting go temporarily, and then going back to exactly what I had been doing before I came to Vegas. Was this thing with Carson morphing into something dangerous for both of us? If feelings got involved, even on a basic level, where did that leave us when all was said and done?
I didn't know what to do. The logical part of me was telling me to end this and walk away, despite the fact that I liked him and we had this electric chemistry. The emotional part of me was holding on, but to what, I didn't know and it didn't make sense.
He was an enigma to me–stinging me one minute and then soothing me the next–with his words, his touch, his smile.
Shit, shit, shit! This had become complicated and I'd only spent a day and a half with him.
I dropped down on the bed and looked at Carson, now standing with his hip against the corner of the wall, arms crossed casually, studying me. Why did he have to be so gorgeous? It was his poison and he'd injected it into me–I was infected. I laughed humorlessly, ending on a sigh.
"What?" he asked, cocking his head to the side.
"Us." I raised both arms and dropped them. "What are we doing, Carson?"
He looked down, sliding his teeth up his bottom lip and worrying his brow. "What do you want to be doing, Grace?"
I looked down. I wanted to be spending time with him. But I wanted it to make sense. I was pretty sure my whole "Guy Number Two" cover was blown, for me anyway. I had done a good job of convincing myself that that was the reason I agreed to spend the weekend with him, but had it ever actually been the case? Maybe not. Something about him drew me in and made me want to stay, break all my rules, throw all my well-made plans out the door, experience things I'd never allowed myself to experience, want things I'd never allowed myself to want. He wasn't part of my plan as I'd convinced myself–he was the antithesis of my plan. And I wasn't sure anymore if that was bad or good. But did it even matter? We couldn't be any more than a weekend, it wasn't possible. For too many reasons to count. And I was pretty sure that it was going to be hard to walk away Monday morning, knowing that that was it. Definitively. Was it worth it to make it that much harder by spending another day with him?
Carson came and squatted before me, resting his arms
on my knees and looking up into my eyes. "Listen, Buttercup, clearly this weekend arrangement has changed into something that we didn't necessarily expect it to. We're friends." He smiled. "Who would have guessed? And I for one, want to spend the rest of the weekend with my friend. Do you want that too?"
I looked down at him. Is that what we were? Friends? Friends who had sex for the weekend? I guess maybe that was better than strangers who had sex for the weekend. And really, how much harder was it going to be to walk away in thirty-six hours, rather than right now? I couldn't see things changing much by Monday morning. I would survive. It would suck because I liked him, but I would do it and it would be okay. By the time I'd touched down in D.C., reality would be back in focus and I'd resume my life.
"Yes, I want that too."
He shot me that heart-melting smile that went straight to my head like fine champagne. "Good. I'm going to go up to my room and get dressed for dinner, and then I'm taking you somewhere nice. Can you be ready in half an hour?"
I nodded. "I have that gift certificate," I reminded him.
"Yeah, but I want to take you out so I'm not using your gift certificate."
"Why? We both earned it for getting stuck in that elevator."
"Because it's important to me to treat you, that's all. End of story."
I bit my lip. I needed to say one final thing about what happened at the pool before I could put it to rest. "I hated seeing you touch her, Carson, and that scared me too," I said quietly.
He closed his eyes for a beat, dropping his head. When he looked back up into my eyes, his own were filled with regret. "I used her to get back at you. It was wrong on so many levels." He shook his head slightly. "I didn't know what to do with it. I've never been… jealous before. It was unchartered waters."
"You were jealous?" I asked. "Of Parker?"
He nodded. "Yeah. I wanted to drown him in the pool."
I laughed, but quickly covered my mouth and shook my head. "That's not nice."
He smiled. "No, it's not. It's also illegal. So I held myself back and chose to be an asshole instead." His face went serious. "I really am sorry."